Kubo Troll

About

Kubo Troll is a nickname given to the author of the manga series Bleach, Tite Kubo, which is typically used within various online anime communities to mock plot twists, minimalist arts and other tropes featured in the manga.

Origin

The earliest use of the concept appeared after the release of the chapter 354 of the manga series, "Heart", in which the Espada member Yammy reveals that he is the strongest member of the group after removing his number 10 and revealing that the chart goes from 0 to 9. On April 17th, 2009, a day after the chapter release, an anonymous user from 4chan's anime and manga board /a/ called Kubo "the troll of the year".^[2]

Spread

The same day, Naruto Forums user Mori submitted a thread titled "Kubo Tite Trolled My Fandom", featuring several banners with the catchphrase and inspiring several derivatives.^[4] On October 2nd, YouTuber smyton4tw uploaded a fan animation featuring Kubo attacking several Bleach characters with his "troll powers", gaining over 254,000 views in the following years.

On June 26th, 2010, a image macro series titled "Lazy Kubo" was submitted on Memegenerator, along with a picture poking fun at the training of two characters before they got defeated.^[6] On August 4th, user kuboisatroll submitted a definition of the term on Urban Dictionary, defining it as "The creator of the Bleach manga who constantly puts shit in his manga and then says JK and fucks up everything".^[5] On September 20th, 2011, the Tumblr blog titekubo was created, featuring a novelty Tite Kubo answering to questions from the fans, often referring to some of the Kubo troll jokes.^[7] On February 26th, 2015, YouTuber Anime Fantastica uploaded a Kubo interview with humorous subtitles added, featuring him telling a history about asking money to a friend and gaining over 14,000 views in the following year. During the years, the joke spread to other communities aside from /a/,^[2] like Tumblr.^[1]

The Heart

"The Heart" is an infamous page from the chapter 354 of the manga series. Featuring the aforementioned words in a white page, "The Heart" has been seen by the fans and critics as a lazy attempt to get more pages with minimal effort, and has been heavily associated to Troll Kubo and shitposting with the Bleach fandom.

No Backgrounds

Another artistic trope that has been criticised and mocked is the simplistic artstyle of the series, with an abundance of white color in the character design and lack of backgrounds, which are often white. This has often been parodied in several fan comics.

Kubo vs. Kishimoto

One of Kubo Troll's running jokes is depicting Kubo as the greatest of the artists from the "Big 3" (a term used in anime communities to refer to Bleach, Naruto and One Piece), often despicting him as superior to Masashi Kishimoto and Eichiiro Oda, often beating them up.

Various Examples

Burn the Witch

On June 27th, 2018, Kubo announced his project following Bleach, a one-shot comedy manga called Burn the Witch, to be published in Weekly Shonen Jump Issue #33. A thread on Reddit^[8] about the announced gained over 470 points. It was also covered by Kotaku^[9] and Anime News Network.^[10]

Search Interest

External References